TIM HENSON TALMAN MOVIE
TIM HENSON TALMAN TV

''I want to tell you about an early case,'' he stated. ''My name is Bill Talman,'' he began, calling himself ''the most unsuccessful prosecuting attorney in the history of the legal profession.''

Then the cameras moved inside, where the actor sat on a chair. The spot opened with pictures of Talman's carefree children playing in the yard. The cameramen and others in attendance, including Burr, waited patiently. He could barely perform, given both his constant pain and morphine-induced haze. The taping, at Talman's home in Encino, Calif., was not easy. ''But this one had to be done.'' In the late 1960s, antismoking public service announcements had just begun to appear on television, but there had never been anything like the spot that Talman was about to film. ''The American Cancer Society was never pleased about putting out spots of people dying,'' he recalled. ''I know exactly what I want to say.'' A dying man telling the story of how he began smoking, Talman believed, could prevent others from ever starting.

TIM HENSON TALMAN TV

''I want to do a TV spot,'' the actor said. Eventually, the call was routed to Irving Rimer, head of publicity for the organization. Then, in July 1968, Bill Talman made a remarkable decision: He phoned the American Cancer Society. Hardest of all was breaking the bad news to the six Talman children, four from previous marriages and two, Tim and Susan, from Bill and Peggy's marriage. As the summer of 1968 progressed, Talman required increasing doses of morphine, which relieved the pain but made him groggy. The cancer's advanced stage made it inoperable.ĭespite radiotherapy treatments, the cancer within months had spread to the actor's other lung and his brain. A biopsy obtained during surgery provided even worse news. The results were ominous - an apparent cancer in his left lung. In September 1967, Talman underwent a chest X-ray for a persistent cough. Indeed, despite growing warnings about the dangers of smoking, Talman smoked as many as three packs per day.

Long after he had married Flanigan in 1958 and gotten his life in order, Talman continued to smoke cigarettes, a habit he had begun at age 12. By the late 1950s, when Talman met Peggy Flanigan at a mutual friend's poker party, he had two failed marriages behind him and a history of heavy drinking.īut it was another behavior common to actors that would ultimately doom Bill Talman. Yet, despite his great achievements in Hollywood, Talman experienced his share of adversity.

TIM HENSON TALMAN MOVIE

William Talman was already an accomplished movie actor in 1957 when he landed the role of Hamilton Burger, the prosecutor who was always being outwitted by defense attorney Perry Mason, played by Raymond Burr. Peggy Talman said she hopes that her story, one of the sadder ironies in the history of the antismoking movement, can educate the public about a problem that just won't go away. The Talmans - including several children who also took up smoking - offer a case study in just how habit and family history can trump both common sense and tragedy. ''Now, what you're seeing, unfortunately, are people who, when they are confronted with incontrovertible evidence, they still keep smoking.''ĭespite billions spent in the war on smoking, researchers still know relatively little about what lures former smokers back, largely because tobacco dependence is a hard-to-measure mixture of nicotine craving and psychological need. Doug Jorenby, director of clinical services at the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin. ''Most of the people who were lighter smokers or not as heavily addicted, they quit, a lot of them quit in the early `80s and `90s,'' said Dr. And none of the stop-smoking programs - from nicotine gum to acupuncture - are likely to work unless the smoker is both motivated and prepared for withdrawal pains. Of the 49 million current American smokers, about 80 percent have tried to quit and failed at least once, giving former cigarette smokers a relapse rate nearly equal to former heroin addicts. Unfortunately, as organizers of the Great American Smokeout celebrate the antismoking event's 25th anniversary this week, Peggy Talman's story is increasingly typical. ''It's just awful,'' Talman said she thought at the time.

Within a few years, Peggy Talman was smoking again and, last August, she got the grim news: Just like her husband, she had lung cancer. Yet, even after she watched smoking kill her husband, even after she took up his antismoking crusade, her hands somehow felt empty without a cigarette. Talman, the actor who played the perpetually unsuccessful district attorney, Hamilton Burger, on the fabled ''Perry Mason'' show from 1957 to 1966, was dying of lung cancer. In July 1968, her husband, 53-year-old William Talman, taped a landmark antismoking public service announcement that warned of the hazards of cigarettes. Peggy Talman knew better than anyone that she should not smoke.

Tim henson talman